A Gift from the Moon
by The-Darkness-Befalls
Summary: Theodore Nott was quiet and never asked for much. It found him anyways. No regrets. Theo/Luna.


**xXxXx**

**A Gift from the Moon**

**xXxXx**

**Written for hannah-askance.**

**Nifafin,**

**May you remember the magic and hold it close,**

**Always, _Twitchy._**

**xXxXx**

When he first saw her, he never expected to pay her any heed. She stood there with her dreamy eyes and her fairy tale hair and looked nothing like a Ravenclaw, as the Hat soon proclaimed her to be moments later.

He wasn't expecting to remember that moment, years later, and wish that he had looked closer, known her longer.

But he did look back on the moment, at that time when they were still innocent and cheerful children just trying to thrive.

He wished he had known her then, as he knew her now. He knew without a doubt his life would have been better for it.

**xXxXx**

The second time he saw her, truly looked her direction and focused on her was much later.

He was fourteen then, barely a teenager, but in the end, his age didn't seem to matter.

She had looked his direction with her endless silver eyes and the light pink of her smile seemed to enchant her face with some iridescent glow.

_This _was a magic he had never known. _This_ was the first time he had truly seen her. And oh how truly lucky he felt then, to see her glance his way and smile.

He didn't know then that his life would never be the same, that she would never be the same, that he wouldn't. All he knew was that she was a girl and he was a boy and when she smiled at him there was magic and peace and his chest felt warm and he was happy.

He was fourteen when he fell in love with Luna Lovegood.

And he had never regretted a day, a moment, a second.

**xXxXx**

He made excuses to talk to her and she let him. She told him of fabled creatures and magic spells that in theory he knew would never work. But there was such a _life _about her that he could deny her nothing.

No one noticed him talking to her, noticed the way his face light up when she looked his way or the way a smile appeared on his face when he left her side.

She was shunted by her dormmates for her oddness and he had always been alone in his quiet. She was vibrant and challenging and loud and he was somber and silent. But he spoke when they were together, spoke of books and magic and peace and traveling.

By the time he was sixteen they had been best friends for nearly two years. And yes, they loved each other, a deeper visceral kind of love. Like they always had, but it took them lifetimes to find each other. She had seen that love in her parents, before her mother's passing and he saw it every time he looked into the quicksilver of her dreamy eyes.

**xXxXx**

One night, she had come to him in his dorm. He had no idea how she'd gotten there and crawled onto his bed with no one noticing. He knew she was different and smarter than the other girls, the ones that hid her clothing and called her names.

She was stronger too.

And that night, she told him a story. About a little fish in the water, just swimming looking for a mate. And he was there and then she was warm. And she told him about the tuna fish, and he felt like he would never understand her completely.

He knew he didn't care. She was special. She was his best and only true friend even if no one noticed her there.

That night she slept against him, murmuring about how his scales were much softer than she remembered. And he fell asleep with a single finger curled in her hair.

**xXxXx**

The next day she rode a Thestral into battle, her hair flowing behind her like a tapestry woven of his dreams. He worried and he screamed and yelled.

And when his dormmates finally noticed him, finally saw that he was a real boy who had feelings and a life and wasn't some loner but someone who was lonely, he could feel the guilt in their words of comfort and offerings of friendship.

They had passed him by like they passed Luna by. And he had slept in the bed next to them for five years, he had sat next to them in class and studied with them when they did not understand a class.

Luna was a younger girl who wasn't in their house or in Gryffindor. She was a nobody to them because she didn't possess a perfect Witchly face nor a bloodline that was pure as their own. But he? He knew them! He knew them well enough to know that Draco had a crush on Ginny Weasley that he would never act on, that Blaise was having sex with Eloise Midgeon in the Prefect's bathroom every Tuesday night. He knew that Goyle and Crabbe were half brothers!

In the end, he remembered Luna's words. She told him he was like a schwa, always there but rarely seen. And he knew she always believed in what couldn't be seen, in the things that sneaked between the lines of what was always seen and hid there until someone real, someone full of life could pull it out and see its beauty for themselves.

She came back that night, weary and damaged. But he looked at her hair, knotted and ratted. He looked at her lips, pink smeared with blood. He looked at her hands, shaking from the after effects of stunning. He looked at her eyes, and saw that magic, that love, that _Luna_ in her. And he thought she was the most beautiful person in the world.

**xXxXx**

His dormmates warned him against her. She was with Potter, she was no better than a Gryffindor. As a Nott, he had an image to uphold and as a Slytherin, he had one as well.

But what was love without hardship? Could he choose her over a friendship that he had wanted for so long?

No, he would never choose.

She was always first.

His best friend, his true friend, his other half in all the ways that mattered to him.

**xXxXx**

Another year passed, war began.

Lives were lost. A little of the spark left her every day. But he knew they would persevere, knew she would bounce back. They had to.

He had been disowned. Left to find his own way to pay for schooling in the midst of a war that was tearing all he had ever known apart. But she was there, and so he would always be there for her.

**xXxXx**

They held strong to the love they carried, held it fast even when the world crashed down around them. They were like the majestic Thunnus, maintaining warmth when the water around them was drained of it.

And though they looked like a Ravenclaw and a Slytherin just holding each other when all seemed to be lost, he knew it wasn't.

Luna had told him of the Thunnus, and how such a beautiful creature with a beautiful name was also known by such a simple word like tuna. And he remembered her as a little girl, sitting on a wooden stool and hoping that someone would understand the dreams in her eyes and the magic in her soul.

He did.

Together, they began a year that would rip apart their lives countless times. But they had one thing in each other that no one else around them could seem to understand. Warmth in the cold. Faith, hope, and love.

* * *

**x End**

"A remarkable aspect of Thunnus physiology is its ability to maintain body temperature above that of the ambient seawater." -Wikipedia article on Tuna.


End file.
